The Sun Will Still Rise in the East Tomorrow

The unpopular health care overhaul bill passed in the house tonight, 219-212. We all knew this was going to happen and you were fooling yourself if you believed otherwise. Already, Republicans are planning on repealing the bill should they win back the majority in Congress in November. You are fooling yourself if you think the Republicans taking over Congress in November will change anything. It won’t, I’ve seen that movie before.

The natural tendency of government is to get bigger, no matter which party is in charge. This is the natural way of things just like the sun rising in the east. Will this health care bill increase the size of government and take liberty from us? Probably, but no more than the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the Social Security system, Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other unconstitutional government programs already have. The politicians and pundits on the right have been ranting and raving about how this health care bill will destroy our country and our liberty, but our liberty is long gone. We are all slaves to the debt. Our debt didn’t just happen overnight or under one President, but we are doing nothing to stop it. If you think the Republicans taking over Congress will solve our debt problem, you are fooling yourself.

It’s easy to see what will happen to us if we keep going down this road. Just look at Greece. The only way to solve our debt problem is to drastically reduce the size of government. A 50% reduction would be great, but that would be only a start. A limited government with a responsible citizenry is the only way out of the mess. I know it’s a lot to ask for but with liberty comes sacrifice and responsibility.

First, we need to dismantle our empire. Our military occupies land in over 150 countries or territories. Why? What are we gaining from this? We need to bring our military back home to their families. We need to remove ourselves from the UN and stop giving them money. We need to remove our embassies from other countries. Our founders gave us a republic, not an empire.  Anything other than a republic is unconstitutional.

Next, we need to abolish our entitlement programs. All of them. We can no longer allow people to think that the government can or will be their “safety net.” We all need to learn to weave our own safety nets of personal responsibility. Asking for help from your family, neighbors, community or religious institution is fine, but you shouldn’t be able to ask the government.

Dismantling our empire and abolishing our entitlement programs would be the first of many steps we need to take to solve our debt problem and limit the size of government back to what the Constitution demands, and they couldn’t happen overnight, but they need to start happening soon if we want to remove from our necks the yoke of debt we have burdened ourselves with. Will the Republicans or Democrats start to make this happen? No, they won’t. They are too busy arguing about federal funding of abortion.

Am I happy about the health care bill? No. Am I happy about anything government does? Not really. Even if this health care bill were repealed, don’t fool yourself, it wouldn’t be a great victory for liberty. To have the liberty our founders wanted would require much more that repealing this health care bill. It is well worth fighting for, but no one in government from either party except Ron Paul is truly fighting for liberty right now. As much as I love Dr. Paul, he cannot lead us to the promised land. We will have to lead ourselves there, one individual at a time, rising up for liberty. I see hope in the Tea Parties, but they must fight from being overtaken by the Republican party or people like Sarah Palin. But that is a topic for another post.

The natural tendency of government is to get bigger and more powerful. It is the natural way of things, just like the sun rising in the east.

A Few Thoughts on the Texas School Board Decision

As I’m sure many of you have already heard, the Texas Board of Education voted last Friday to adopt new K-12 social studies textbook standards for history and economics curriculum. The Texas Board is made up of 15 elected members, 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats. According to the New York Times, the board has put a “conservative stamp” on the curriculum. Since Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the country, the Board’s decision will have influence on most other state’s curriculum. The new standards are very conservative and the Board’s decision has, predictably, received much praise from those on the right and has raised the ire of those on the left.

I don’t care to dwell on the changes made by the board, if you’re interested in that a simple Google search will give you all the information you need. I want to focus on the teachable moments that this decision has offered us.

First, elections have consequences. In the last election, held on 11/04/2008, there were 7 state school board seats up for grabs. All but one of the seats were won by incumbents because District 6 had no incumbent. The highest vote count in this election was in District 14 where 579,172 people voted in school board race. These school board elections happened on the same night as the Presidential election when voter turnout is always the highest. Over 8 million people in Texas voted that night for President so I guess most of them either forgot to or didn’t care to vote for their school board member. I bring this up because if everyone who voted for Barack Obama, and lived in a District where there was a school board election, had voted for the Democrat running for school board, that would have had a huge impact on the recent curriculum decision. I would bet that most of the people who are bitching and moaning about this school board decision didn’t even take the time to vote for their school board member. Elections have consequences. 

Second, the amount of textbooks that Texas buys shouldn’t affect any other state in the country, but it does. Why is that? There are only three major (and a few minor) companies that publish textbooks in the United States. Since there are so few players in the textbook market, what we end up with is an oligopoly. Oligopolies are not inherently bad, and sometimes can be good depending on the market. However, in the case of the textbook market, an oligopoly is a bad thing. The textbook publishers have no incentive to provide choices. Since states like California and Texas are the biggest states in terms of population, thus the biggest textbook customers, the textbook publishers only need to please them and the other states are forced to deal with it. Also, the K-12 textbook market is a “broken market” since the end consumers (students) do not select the product, and the people choosing the product (faculty) do not purchase the product. Who purchases the product? The government, i.e. taxpayers. 

Which brings me to teachable moment number three. The root cause of this whole brouhaha is the fact that the government has a monopoly on education in our country. Why should a board of 15 people in any state get to decide what does and doesn’t get taught in school? This is what happens when the government runs things. Whether a board or committee is elected or selected, the decisions they make regarding whatever institution or industry they control becomes set in stone. Once this happens it is difficult to change. In the case of the Texas school board, it will be another TEN YEARS before the social studies curriculum is changed again. Ideally the government is supposed to be held accountable by the people, but elections only happen every so often, and even when they do occur, as I mentioned before, voter turnout is usually not very high. If you were a school board member who gets voted into office over and over again by less than 1% of all eligible voters would you really care what the public at large thought about your decisions? Probably not. 

Since I’m a Conservative Libertarian I don’t really have a problem with most of the curriculum decisions that the Texas School Board made. However, if I were a Liberal Democrat I’d be very upset. A liberal parent shouldn’t be forced to send their child to a school that teaches something they don’t believe, but with our current system there is very little choice. Children are indoctrinated by whomever runs the school system at any given time. No wonder test scores have remained stagnant for over 30 years. The people who run our schools care more about their personal political agendas rather than educating our children to make them the best and brightest in the world.   

Ironically, the very thing that could solve this problem is something that Liberals are completely against: privatizing the school system. If there wasn’t a government monopoly on education schools would be forced to compete with each other, and you could send your child to the school whose views most closely resembled your own. There could be Liberal schools and Conservative schools, although I doubt that it would breakdown that way. The breakdown would more likely be schools that can teach your child to think and succeed in the world and schools that can’t.

Media Weapons of Massa Distraction

The big story out of Washington this week is the resignation of New York Congressman Eric Massa. The details are a quick Google search away if you’re interested. Massa went on Glenn Beck’s show this week to tell his story. It was a boring interview and nothing interesting came out of it. Beck himself said he wasted our time by having the interview and that the story didn’t matter to any of us personally. I agree with Beck in this instance. This story doesn’t matter to any of us at all.

In the realm of political sex scandals, Massa’s scandal is farm league. There were no hookers or blow, no oral sex, no dead bodies- only ‘tickle fights.’ This should have been a one day story in the news at the most but it’s turning into a huge cabal. Today, the House Republicans are spreading rumors that they are going to ask the House Ethics Committee to investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader for their handling of information about misbehavior by Congressman Massa. This is completely unnecessary and it’s obvious they’re doing this to get back at the Democrats for the whole Mark Foley scandal in 2006. Thank you House Republicans for standing up and fighting for the American people, I can’t wait until you guys are in charge again.  

This is a total waste of time. As Glenn Beck said, this story doesn’t affect any of us personally at all. It’s about as important as the Balloon Boy or Tiger Woods story. Unfortunately, stories like these that pass for ‘news’ today.

While everyone is distracted by this stupid story, Pelosi is no doubt behind the scenes, working alongside the White House, arm twisting the fence sitters in their caucus to vote for the unpopular health care bill that will literally affect every single person in the country. Did you know that they want to add a provision to the health care bill that would completely overhaul the nation’s student loan program and require the Education Department to originate all student assistance loans, effectively eliminating a role for banks and other private lenders. For those of you keeping score, Obama has taken over two car companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and potentially the entire health care system and the student loan industry.  Still think Obama isn’t a socialist?    

 Health care isn’t the only thing they’re working on right now either. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are meeting with Obama today to talk about immigration reform. According to the Politico, the Schumer-Graham plan “includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (a liberal must-have) while sweetening the pot for moderates by proposing tough new safeguards, including a biometric national ID card for workers.”

A biometric national ID card!?!? Are you f***ing kidding me? ‘Moderates’ are in favor of this? Apparently so. Bill O’Reilly talked about it on his show this week with Lou Dobbs and they were both all for it. The Wall Street Journal said the proposal was only “potentially controversial.” I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Does liberty even matter anymore?

As if a government takeover of health care/student loans and the National ID cards aren’t bad enough, ABC News reported that the Tresasury Department announced yesterday that “the government racked up a record-high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion in February.” (Remember, February is the shortest month of the year.)

According to ABC: 

The latest flood of red ink brings the total deficit for the first five months of the current fiscal year to $651 billion, far exceeding the $589 billion shortfall for the same timeframe in the last fiscal year. The government ended the 2009 fiscal year with a record $1.4 trillion shortfall. The Obama administration has forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit for this year.

 That speaks for itself. If you still believe anything that Obama says about ushering in a new era of responsibility, cutting deficits, deficit neturality, or reducing the national debt you’re an idiot. 

 So while everyone in the media is using the Massa scandal to get ratings the government takes away more of our liberty. I guess it’s just a slow news day.

Did You Know the Patriot Act was Extended…by Democrats?

The folks at the World Socialist Web Site are up in arms:

With almost no debate, the Democratic leadership in Congress pushed through an unamended extension of the USA Patriot Act’s most notorious provisions, granting sweeping powers to eavesdrop and seize library, Internet and other personal records of US citizens. 

The three extended provisions give US intelligence agencies the power to: 1) conduct “roving” wiretaps without specifying a particular phone number or e-mail account; 2) force institutions to surrender credit, banking, medical, mental health and library records; and 3) spy on so-called lone-wolf foreign nationals, who have no affiliation to either terrorist organizations or foreign governments.

 Since it passage, the Patriot Act has come under intense criticism from most on the left. These “notorious provisions” were originally set to expire in December but were granted a two month extension that was set to expire Sunday. The Senate Judiciary Committee had proposed some amendments to the provisions that would have barred the use of National Security Letters, NSLs, which are ”administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon to obtain confidential records of US citizens who are not suspected of terrorism or espionage.” Other potential amendments to the provisions included removing immunity from telecommunications companies who helped the government with wiretaps. In the end, however, none of these amendments were added and the provisions were extended for another year. 

The Associated Press blames the Democrats’ inability to amend these provisions on Republicans:    

Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the nation’s primary counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations.

If Democrats had allowed the Senate to have a full debate on the Judiciary Committee restrictions, they would have exposed themselves to Republican arguments that Democrats were hurting law enforcement.

So for almost 8 years since the Patriot Act was passed, the Democrats bashed Bush over the head with it as evidence of their belief that he was a fascist turning our country into a police state, but now that they’re in power they don’t want to appear “soft” on terrorism so they are caving to the Republicans every wish on the subject? The World Socialists aren’t buying it:

While no doubt such cowardice and opportunism govern all of the decisions made by the Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the reality is that support for the police state measures introduced with the Patriot Act has been bipartisan from the outset.

While the Democratic Party won the 2008 election based on a platform that explicitly promised to overturn unconstitutional provisions in the Patriot Act and halt “the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime,” since coming to office the Obama administration has continued and expanded these practices.

Just as with its foreign policy that continues the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and an economic policy designed to defend Wall Street at the expense of workers’ jobs, wages and benefits, the Obama administration is continuing the wholesale assault on democratic rights initiated by its predecessor.

The staggering repudiation of the promises made by the so-called candidate of “change” is not a matter merely of Obama’s own duplicity. He heads a government that is dedicated to the defense of the essential interests of a financial oligarchy.

Under conditions of deepening economic crisis and in the face of ever-wider social polarization at home, it can defend these interests only by embracing the unconstitutional methods adopted by the Bush administration. The Obama White House is continuing to build up a police state not for use against some ubiquitous terrorist threat, but to counter the inevitable growth of mass struggles by the American working class.

If only Republicans could stick it to Democrats like the Socialist do. What I don’t understand is why the socialist are against the Patriot Act. They don’t like the idea of a police state being used against the working class, but at the same time they want the state to control the means of production and seize all private property. It doesn’t make sense. Where do we see police states today? Socialist states like Cuba, Venezuela, and China. If the socialist were being intellectually honest and consistent they would be in favor of the Patriot Act since a socialist state needs to be a police state to survive.

I don’t like the Patriot Act because it infringes on my individual liberty. It’s a prime example of a Federal government that has entirely too much power. If the Socialists had their way though, the power of government would expand exponentially. They are right about one thing, however, the American working class has started to rise up against the government int he form of the Tea Party. Instead of rising up and demanding a Marxist state; they are demanding liberty, freedom, and free markets. They understand that Capitalists don’t oppress people, governments do, with laws like the Patriot Act.

Get Ready for a Health Care Shortage

President Obama released a new proposal for health care today. You can read his proposal on www.whitehouse.gov. The main purpose of this proposal is to combine the ideas of the House, the Senate, and the Republicans into one…something. I’m not sure if this is a bill that will be voted on, an executive order, or just something to talk about at the bipartisan summit on Thursday. Regardless, it is full of bad ideas.

This ‘new’ proposal will still force ask everyone to buy health insurance. According to the proposal,  ”In order to lower costs for all Americans and extend coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, all Americans who can afford to purchase insurance will be asked to.” (emphasis mine)  It then goes on to say that, “To help bring costs under control for all Americans and cover all Americans with pre-existing conditions, all Americans who can afford insurance will have the responsibility to purchase it.” (emphasis mine) So which is it? Do we “have the responsibility” which implies that we don’t have a choice and will be required to buy health insurance, or will we be “asked” which implies we have a choice to refuse? Orwell would be proud of this kind of doublespeak. President Obama opposed this idea on the campaign trail and many have raised questions on the Constitutionality of forcing people to buy particular products from particular companies. Unfortunately, our leaders in Congress like Nancy Pelosi don’t take the Constitutional concerns about this proposal seriously.   

Be that as it may, the worst idea of the whole proposal is a new “Health Insurance Rate Authority to review and rein in unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.” The Health Insurance Rate Authority will basically be a price control panel. What will happen (most likely) is that this panel will set price ceilings on health insurance. Economics 101 tells you that when you put a price ceiling in place, a shortage will occur. This doesn’t mean that we will have less health care resources, it just means that there will be less health care providers willing to provide health care at a price fixed arbitrarily by the government. You need only ask someone who lived through the “gas crisis” of the 1970s. Price controls were enacted and there was a huge gas shortage which led to long lines at the gas stations and some gas stations setting limits on how much gas people could buy. The same thing will happen with health care. Is this what we want? I hope not. What good is having cheap or free health care if you have to wait for weeks or months to see a doctor, get test results, or have a surgical procedure? I would much rather pay a higher price to get medical care when I need it just like I would much rather pay a few more cents a gallon not to wait in line at a gas station.

There may be some good ideas in the President’s proposal, but forcing people to buy health insurance at prices set by the government is the type intrusion that will destroy our health care system. The Health Insurance Rate Authority is the new Death Panel.

Failed Stimulus

Just over a year ago the government passed the $787 Billion stimulus bill that is now going to cost the taxpayers more than $800 billion. The President and Vice President spoke about the stimulus bill this past Wednesday at a press conference. According to the President, the stimulus bill “ is responsible for the jobs of about 2 million Americans who would otherwise be unemployed.  These aren’t just our numbers; these are the estimates of independent, nonpartisan economists across the spectrum.”  I am amazed that people still take seriously someone who says things like “independent, nonpartisan economists from across the spectrum.“  I’d like to meet some of these economist, or at least know their names. But I digress.

 The President then went on to say this:

And I just want to point this out — there has never been a program of this scale, moved at this speed, that has been enacted as effectively and as transparently as the Recovery Act.  I’m grateful that Congress agreed to my request that the bill include no earmarks, that all projects receive funding based solely on their merits.  And despite that, I was still concerned — Joe and I were just talking in the back — when this thing passed we said $787 billion — somewhere there’s going to be some story of some money that ended up being misspent; $787 billion spent out over 18 months, that’s a lot — that’s a lot of money.  And it is a testimony to Vice President Biden and his team that, as Joe puts it, the dog, so far at least, hasn’t barked. (emphasis mine)

Seriously? The stimulus was enacted effectively? There were no earmarks? None of the money in the stimulus was misspent, or at least not enough to cause any dogs to bark? Let’s go over these claims slowly.

1. Stimulus was enacted effectively. Today in the LA Times Andrew Malcom reports on problems with the weatherization of homes program. In short, the government has weatherized roughly 9,100 homes for $57,362 each. They could have done more according to the GAO, but there was too much RED TAPE. Only the largest producer of red tape could blame red tape for a lack of progress. This is just one extreme example, but the true test of the bill’s effectiveness should be employment. The whole purpose of the bill was to stimulate employment. Using that metric, the stimulus bill has been one of the most ineffective bills in history. 

2. No earmarks. I can’t believe the media still allows President Obama to make this claim. It is completely FALSE! Just do a google search for “earmarks in stimulus bill” and you will get 155,000 results. 

3. Money wasn’t misspent. I guess this category is a bit more subjective but here are a few things that the stimulus paid for that I personally consider “misspent money.”

• $800,000 to keep animals of runway at Purdue University Airport.
• New York spent about $1 million on road signs advertising stimulus funded projects.
• $123,000 to evaluate “drug use as sex enhancer.”
• $500,000 to increase awareness about the importance of trees.
• $1.75 million to install energy-efficient garage doors at Washington DC fire stations.
• $2.2 million to install skylights in a liquor warehouse in Montana
• $2.8 million for toilets in New Mexico national forests.
• $50,000 grant to a San Francisco film house that screened a ‘porno horror film’ called “Thundercrack”

 I could go on but I think you get the point. I think it is safe to say that despite what the President says, the stimulus was a complete failure. It hasn’t improved employment, it hasn’t improved the economy, and it has wasted mucho dinero. Needless to say I don’t think we should pass another stimulus bill.

The System is Working

In response to the Christmas Day terror attack attempt, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that “the system worked.” This statement was heavily criticized and was almost as bad as when President Bush told former FEMA director Harry Browne that he was doing a “heckuva job” after Hurricane Katrina. These are two instances where the system clearly didn’t work. Washington seems to have a habit of claiming that broken systems are working and working systems are broken. There is a new meme starting to spread that there is another system in Washington that isn’t working: the Senate. 

When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Democrats took control of the White House and both houses of the legislation, a rare feat in American history. Within weeks of his inauguration they were able to pass the $787 billion stimulus plan*, but since then they’ve passed no other pieces of major legislation. The House has passed a health-care bill, the cap-and-trade bill, and a jobs bill but they are all gathering dust in the Senate.  

The most often heard complaint is that Senate Republicans are using the rules of the Senate, most notably the filibuster, to obstruct bills, but this is a weak complaint since the Democrats had a 60 seat filibuster-proof majority all year until Scott Brown won the special election to replace Ted Kennedy. This event rocked the Democrats’ world and many are either retiring or thinking twice of running for re-election. The most recent drop-out was Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. One of his reasons for retiring is that the Congress is broken and not doing the job of the people. 

So the meme now is that the Senate system is broken. This is false. The Senate is working exactly as our Founders had intended. It was designed to be a deliberative body to cool the passions of the House and give power to the minority via the filibuster to force compromise. Since Democrats have been unwilling to compromise they have had to buy off moderates in their own party which has raised the  ire of the public.

Now, instead of following the will of the public and working to compromise with Republicans, Senate Democrats want to change the rules and lower the threshold of votes required to stop a filibuster. A bill has been introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa but will probably go nowhere. If they want to change the vote threshold at the beginning of a new Congress that’s fine, but they can’t do it in the middle of a session. This would be like the New York Mets declaring in the 5th inning of a game that anyone who reaches second base automatically scores.         

*Today marks the one year anniversary of the stimulus bill’s passage. By all accounts (using the President’s own measurements) it has failed. Millions of jobs have been lost, government has become bloated, and all those ‘shovel ready’ projects remain shovel ready. In hindsight, it would have been better if Congress had done nothing. For now on we should call it the failed stimulus bill.